Tight, unrelenting action drama in post-apocalyptic fascist middle America! Plug that into the YA hype machine, and, well, you have my attention, butTight, unrelenting action drama in post-apocalyptic fascist middle America! Plug that into the YA hype machine, and, well, you have my attention, but also my squinty-eyed, brow-furrowed skepticism, and since squinty and furrowed is my de facto demeanor, I'm talking some serious squint and furrow. Which made it all the more satisfying to realize, many pages in, that this book is pretty damn good. The pace is terrific, slowing when appropriate but never stuck. This has much to do with Collins' minimalism in describing the world and her characters. Much like Katniss and her family, the story survives on little more than the necessities. Collins doesn't linger too long on exposition or painting exquisite backdrops, which in one sense creates an impoverished environment not unlike The Road, but is not so denuded of humanity that it invokes the horror or hopelessness McCarthy might have been looking for. I cared about Katniss, and while I wasn't sure of her fate, I believed she could win out.

That minimalism is also the main flaw of the book. The constant struggle for survival doesn't leave a lot of room for personality. Katniss is a tough-skinned pragmatist with conscience, Peeta is a shy boy in love, Prim and Rue are just innocent little girls, but what are these people really like? If particularities compose a person, these people barely qualify. Katniss can be hot-headed (firing arrows at the Gamemasters), sentimental (flower burial), and righteous (defying the games), but I've yet to see the essential Katniss-ness these actions delineate, or more importantly, I've yet to get the sense that there something there to figure out.

That, however, is a minor qualm in a YA action novel, especially after only one book in a trilogy. There's a lot more to appreciate here as well. As other reviewers have pointed out, Katniss's self-awareness and the reality TV aspects of the Hunger Games are both interesting and well done. The real and the unreal, the ironic and authentic become ever more entangled as Katniss realizes how important performance is to her survival, but, as always, bending the truth costs her in ways she hadn't predicted. Hoping for more of this in the next books, which I just picked up. Looking forward to getting back to Panem.

Re-read in 2011Loses nothing on a second read (or, I'm guessing, a third, fourth, fifth...). Saw the pics of Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss a few days ago and decided I need to re-affirm my own imagery of Katniss and Panem before this movie tries to supplant it. I think Lawrence looks great as Katniss, but I'm a bit concerned about this projected PG-13 rating. There is a lot of very relevant violence in this series. I'm also hoping they shoot most of it in a realist style to contrast with the way the Capitol portrays events. Capitol footage should be like X-Men, everything else like Winter's Bone. Chances of this happening are slim to nil, but I can hope....more

Glad I bought the next two, because this doesn't end at the end. Scads of good fun, as always. Probably the most memorable part of this adventure wasGlad I bought the next two, because this doesn't end at the end. Scads of good fun, as always. Probably the most memorable part of this adventure was Stephen's trip to the Buddhist temple, where men and beasts live together in harmony and Stephen basically gets to have the on-shore naturalizing experience he is repeatedly denied while sailing with Jack. Too good. Also, enemy dissection.

Words & Notes

p. 29 As usual, Stephen is at the cutting edge of medical technology, stocking "plaster of Paris for healing broken limbs in the oriental manner (much favoured now by Dr Maturin)". Wikipedia has an extensive article on orthopedic casts, and traces their origin in Western medicine to observations made in Turkey around 1800.

popliteal (adj): referring to the back of the knee. (p. 40)

plansheer (n): possibly the same as plancer, the underside of a cornice (p. 61)

spirketting (n): I think this is the wooden lining around a port. (p. 61)

roborative (adj): restorative, giving strength (p. 63)

sillery (n): Sillery is a region in France known for its wine. (p. 87)

'Bears I have borne, sir, and badgers...' said Mrs. Broad, her arms folded over a formal black silk dress. 'It was only a very small bear,' said Stephen, 'and long ago.' (p. 112)

chilblains (n): ulceration of the extremities due to cold and humidity (p. 149)

Oh man, this passage from p. 162 is way too good not to recount in full. Jack is interviewing one of his midshipmen on his historical knowledge:

'What do you know about the last American war?'

'Not very much, sir, except that the French and Spaniards joined in and were finely served out for doing so.'

'Very true. Do you know how it began?'

'Yes, sir. It was about tea, which they did not choose to pay duty on. They called out No reproduction without copulation and tossed it into Boston harbour.'

Jack frowned, considered, and said, 'Well, in any event they accomplished little or nothing at sea, that bout.' He passed on to the necessary allowance for dip and refraction to be made in working lunars, matters with which he was deeply familiar; but as he tuned his fiddle that evening he said, 'Stephen, what was the Americans' cry in 1775?'

'No representation, no taxation.'

'Nothing about copulation?'

'Nothing at all. At that period the mass of Americans were in favour of copulation.'

'So it could not have been No reproduction without copulation?'

'Why, my dear, that is the old natural philosopher's watchword, as old as Aristotle, and quite erroneous. Do but consider how the hydra and her kind multiply without any sexual commerce of any sort. Leeuenhoek proved it long ago, but still the more obstinate repeat the cry, like so many parrots.'

'Well, be damned to taxation, in any case. Shall we attack the andante?'

murrain (n): infectious disease among cattle and sheep (p. 163)

p. 189 describes a form of corporal punishment in Pulo Prabang in which a bag partially filled with pepper is placed over the criminal's head and the victim's family then beats him with sticks. A cursory search turned up no supporting evidence, sadly.

kedgeree (n): a semi-horrifying mixture of fish, rice, eggs, curry, parsely, and curry powder, eaten by, who else, Britons. For breakfast. It actually doesn't sound that bad as dinner, but not first thing in the morning, thanks. (p. 216)

"past mark of mouth" apparently means "old" and has some equine origin, but what the actual mark might be I'm not sure. Any equestrians out there? (p. 233)

subjacent (adj): below (p. 262)

frowsty (adj): stale, musty (p. 263)

crapulous (adj): irritable from having eaten or drunk too much (p. 263)

colcannon (n): Irish dish of mashed spuds and cabbage or kale. Maybe I'll make some this week... (p. 270)

pugil (n): same as a pinch, as in the quantity (p. 275)

garstrakes (n): the first planks of wood adjacent to the keel of the ship (p. 275)

comminatory (adj): warning or punishing (p. 288)

castramentation (n): possibly a misspelling of "castrametation," so aptly defined by Jack himself as "the learned word for setting up tents and so on." (p. 307)

"and music shall untune the sky" This beautiful excerpt is from Dryden's "Song for St. Cecilia's Day," the full text of which and an interesting description can be found at Harpers....more

An exceptional field guide. Layouts and illustrations are clean and consistent, every species account includes multiple plumages (if relevant), maps,An exceptional field guide. Layouts and illustrations are clean and consistent, every species account includes multiple plumages (if relevant), maps, and useful points of identification. The organization is taxonomic, which can be troublesome for beginners, but the illustrations are so nice that the book is highly "flippable," i.e. it's relatively easy to flip through and find something close to what you're seeing. My only real complaint is that the pictorial indexes that lead each family only show non-breading plumage. Those grids of illustrations are useful and unique among the field guides I own, but showing only non-breeding plumage is obviously less than ideal during the breeding season....more

Huh, can't believe I haven't added a review for this. I just re-read it after finishing Persuasion for the first time, and, as in previous readings, lHuh, can't believe I haven't added a review for this. I just re-read it after finishing Persuasion for the first time, and, as in previous readings, loved it. Obviously I don't have any pointed additions to centuries of criticism, so I'll just say Elizabeth and Darcy remain two of my favorite characters, the former for her wit and indomitable vivacity, and the latter for his self-righteous propriety subtended by genuine warmth. I guess I enjoy the company of Elizabeths, and aspire to be something like Darcy, even if in actuality I'm probably more akin to some stunted mutt of Mr. Collins' obliviousness and Mr. Bennett's disengagement. It actually took me a long time to figure out the flaws Austen satirized in Mr. Bennett, which speaks to their proximity, no doubt.

It's also wonderful to feel how close Austen's world feels to the present day, despite 200 years of separation. Sure, they're set a long time ago in a place far, far away (from California), but hey! I can see my awkward conversational gaps from here! And I totally know that guy making inappropriate remarks at a social gathering!...more

I'm not sure I've ever read another book that was so full of life, in every sense of the word. Steinbeck and Ricketts portray an existence and a philoI'm not sure I've ever read another book that was so full of life, in every sense of the word. Steinbeck and Ricketts portray an existence and a philosophy that seem impossibly engaged, impossibly full, and it isn't long before you're there on the boat beside them, a can of beer in one hand and a dip net in the other, peering into blue shallows in search of strange and beautiful creatures.

It's bohemian (two guys charter a boat to go tidepooling around the Gulf of California, mostly for the hell of it), but rigorous (specimens are tediously labeled, filed, described). Despite one of them being a professional in the strictest sense, both Ricketts and Steinbeck are the best kind of amateurs, seeking knowledge and adventure for the pure joy and love they find in them. They're driven by a mission to describe the fauna of a relatively unexplored region, but that drive never consumes or defines them, or keeps them from swilling beer and philosophizing. Their humor and presence in their journey brought as much pleasure to read and inhabit as any escapist fantasy I can imagine.

The introduction breaks that fantasy a bit, describing how Steinbeck developed the book from journals that were not his own, and the complete omission of Steinbeck's wife Carol, who also sailed with them. Then again, the intro and Steinbeck's euology to Ricketts provide a realistic backdrop that grounds and encapsulates the joy of the trip, making it seem more attainable, and more true. You can never live aboard the Western Flyer, but you can always seek those kinds of moments....more

I'm not sure why Hicksville has always appealed to me. It has all the abstruse ambiguity that characterizes the kind of literature I usually despise.I'm not sure why Hicksville has always appealed to me. It has all the abstruse ambiguity that characterizes the kind of literature I usually despise. When I encounter something like, say, a David Lynch film, I always want to make sense of it. I figure there must be some structure and logic, a clearly delineated metaphor that, once perceived, will rearrange all the disparate little pieces into a perfect level 18 high score in Tetris (with the giant rocket ship and everything). When that fails, I usually assume the author is fooling with me, and I get angry and frustrated.

This kind of thing pops up in Hicksville in the form of a comic that keeps appearing, page by page, in various places within the novel. The comic is about Captain Cook, marooned on an island in New Zealand, aided by the Maori warrior Hone Heke. They are trying to determine their exact location by studying maps and the stars, and even find a cartographer who is equally lost. It turns out the island is moving. The comic spans three realities in the graphic novel: in the beginning, a man named Augustus E. mails them to Dylan Horrocks himself, who is apparently wallowing in England; one of the characters, Leonard Bates, a comics journalist, keeps finding pages of the comic in odd places (at tea shops, blowing across a field, etc); finally, the Captain, Hone Heke, and the cartographer actually appear in Hicksville at a party, and Leonard chases after them and falls off a cliff.

I gather this all relates to Horrocks' thoughts on comics as a way of mapping time, and their potential for escaping time-based narrative in favor of geographic narrative, in which the fiction depicts spaces for a reader/user to explore, rather than a preset sequence of events. Maybe all the comics within comics are Horrocks' experiment in non-linear, parallel storytelling, and weaving together his own world, his fictional creation, and his creations' creations is his way of providing the reader with more space to explore. Whatever that means.

Actually, Hicksville is appealing for a bunch of basic reasons. Horrocks is an awesome cartoonist, suggesting vast oceanic skyscapes with a few light pen-strokes and suffusing his characters with depth and emotion using deceptively simple, almost childish, drawings. The writing is also excellent, and all the basic gags and tales are wonderful and entertaining. As Seth points out in the intro, the primary draw is probably the thin fog of mystery and wonder that pervades each page, as if the medium of comics were a force of nature.

Elfquest is a story very close to my heart, and I believe it's one of the most undervalued and unknown masterpieces of American fantasy. This is the fElfquest is a story very close to my heart, and I believe it's one of the most undervalued and unknown masterpieces of American fantasy. This is the first book in the series, and while the writing is overwrought at times and the art somewhat lacking in the sophistication that follows later in the series, it clearly establishes the Pinis' immense skills at storytelling, character building, and perhaps most all, beautifully expressive artwork.

Summarizing it will make it seem ridiculous to the uninitiated, but here goes: the Wolfriders are a forest-dwelling clan of elves. When superstitious humans set fire to their forest to drive them out, the Wolfriders must find a new home, dealing with devious trolls, a hostile desert, and strange and foreign elves along the way. I know that sounds pretty cheesy, and at times it is, but it is also magical, heartfelt, and transporting. Hm, maybe I should reread this for xmas......more

I admit, the surpringsingly-and-terrifyingly-not-awful trailer for the upcoming movie adaptation of this book sent me plunging back into its hexapalindromic universe to re-solidify my own mental renditions of Frobisher's bicycle, Sonmi's soap packs, and Lousia's imaginary California, among other things. I emerge even more impressed with Mitchell's mimetic acrobatics, the book's deft allusive integument ("Is not ascent their sole salvation?" p. 512), the acrimonious satire ("if consumers are satisfied with their lives at any meaningful level [...] plutocracy is finished" p. 348), and, ultimately, the nakedly deliberate messages about humanity's will to power and our capacity for empathy re-re-re-re-re-reiterated in the second half. I kept wishing Lousia or Cavendish or someone one would say "Be excellent to each other. Party on, dudes!" but not wishing in a snarky cynical judgy kind of way! Because I actually think Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is pretty... excellent (and come to think of it, is also a story set in multiple time periods with strong musical undertones and a message of peace, love, and happiness...). This book grants me one of the greatest pleasures a book can: it restores profundity to a hackneyed truth. If you're not into Mitchell's prose, characters, or fancy-schmancy structure, though, you might just end up with the hackneyed bit.

(view spoiler)[One thing that still confuses me about this book is the role of the Frobisher story. The other five all deal directly with humanity's inclination toward subjugation that Dr. Goose summed up with his law, "the weak are meat the strong do eat," but the Zedelgem story is different. Robert is stealing from Ayrs in a very material way, but this theft is ancillary. His manipulation of Ayrs and the Crommelyncks, while selfish, is also not entirely one-sided. Ayrs and Frobisher are playing each other, almost equally, and not entirely for the purpose of self-aggrandizement but in the service of music, which they both seem to perceive as a force beyond their own persons. Jocasta is similarly playing Robert for pleasure but also for her husband. I suppose these battles of wills provide the tension that keeps the story flowing, but they still seem WAY different than Maori slave-makers and brainwashed fast food servant clones, and different in kind, not just in scale. I like the fact that it's different (I think the moral refrains in the latter half might have become a bit tiresome without it), but I wonder if there's a reason for its uniqueness. Perhaps Mitchell planned to play up the manipulation aspect but couldn't bring himself to fully damn a man with a quest so similar to his own. (hide spoiler)]

Old review from 2006

This, Sir, is a Novel. I don't think I've read anything so surprisingly excellent since Jonathan Strange Mr Norell. Actually, I have. What I meant to say is that I've read nothing so marvelously epic since then. As usual, my attempts to explain it to people have met with polite nods and changed subjects, but let me try: the book is like 6 perfect little novellas, arranged as Russian matroyshka dolls, and as you read, you bore in, and bore back out. Each doll is a different period in time, the outermost being in the early 19th century, the latest being somewhere around 2200 (I think). Four of the six are out and out genre pieces: historical maritime fiction, crime novel, dystopian scifi, and post-apocalyptic scifi, with all their various tropes rendered with loving affection. But they are just written, so, well that they are simply irresistible. I only wish I could find single genre novels that were as perfectly crafted as a single portion of this book. The pieces placed in the 1930s and the present day are also wonderful, but certainly aren't the type of fare I normally seek out.

But yes, exceedingly well written. What's it about? Well, there's the the journal of an American notary returning home from the Chatham Islands aboard a morally suspect ship in the 1830s; a young quasi-rake of a composer cuckolding an older colleague while helping him write new works, who documents his dalliances and mishaps in letters to his former lover; there's a true-story thriller about a Californian journalist in the 1970s attempting to out a corrupt and deadly energy company for squelching a safety report damning their new nuclear energy plant; the soon-to-be-filmed chronicles of a publisher in the present day whose attempts to escape the extortionist cronies of his gangster star author land him in a Draconian nursing home from which he cannot escape; there's the not-too-distant future testimony of a Korean clone bred for service in a fast food joint but who, via the machinations of forces many and penumbral, gains full consciousness; and finally (in the sweet and creamy middle) the Huck Finnish tale of a post-apocalyptic Hawaiian "primitive" and the "civilized" researcher sent to study his society. Whew! The characters of each story find themselves reading their predecessor, and sometimes characters overlap a very, very little. Each story features a character with the same birth mark, and they all seem to experience deja vu from characters in other stories. See? Now it sounds corny. But I swear to you, it is cool.

I guess the book is primarily about the will to power. Slavery and subjugation, small personal cruelties, corporate greed. It's sort of like the anti-Fountainhead, except much more fun to read. I don't know. Dissecting fiction about giant apes comes much more naturally to me. Please read this book so, at the very least, you can explain it to me.["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>...more